Hamilton 4th of July fireworks: Officials test launching point for large display

Credit: DaytonDailyNews

Tests for how a Fourth of July fireworks display could work that Hamilton conducted Friday night were still under evaluation Monday, as officials are working to determine if the larger fireworks were visible from enough parts of the city

The city and a fireworks contractor launched five shells each from two locations — the Butler County Fairgrounds and Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum — and had people stationed across the city to see how visible the fireworks were from each location.

Officials will pick one of the launch locations for Hamilton’s Independence Day fireworks.

“I don’t know if the choice is as clear as I hoped it was,” said Brandon Saurber, a city spokesman and director of the city’s Department of Neighborhoods. “I’ve got a meeting this morning to talk through that with some other people. It’s going to take some discussion, I feel like.

“I still have one person I’m trying to get their scores back from. All-in-all, it’s pretty close.”

With each location, “There’s trade-offs,” he said. “There’s certainly some areas where they’re more visible than others.”

Volunteers were stationed at 24 locations. When the city picks one of the two locations, officials plan to tell people several good locations to view from. They decided not to have fireworks near downtown to minimize gathering of large crowds because of the coronavirus.

“I think it was a good thing to do, because there were definitely some locations that I would’ve thought had a better view than they ended up having,” he said.

The 10-inch shells “were awesome. They were huge. They were really cool. I wish we could do all 10s,” he said.

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